


Not Today

by GilShalos1



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Intimate Partner Violence, No Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 08:02:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18824539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GilShalos1/pseuds/GilShalos1
Summary: Spoilers up to and including 8.05. Not part of my various ‘A Lion In Winter’ series and conflicts with them. Set post 8.05, takes 8.05 as canon.This is just me, trying to deal with the last episode. There might be more, I don't know.





	Not Today

Jaime Lannister opened his eyes. _Not dead._ His head was ringing and there was a bone-deep ache in his skull that banished thoughts half-formed as he tried to grasp them.

_Not dead._

Beneath him, Cersei was whimpering, a steady soft sound of terror.

_Not dead._

He tried to raise himself from her but his back pressed against something solid and unyielding.

“Shh,” he said to Cersei. “Shh. You’re alright. It’s alright.”

“Jaime. Jaime. Jaime,” she sobbed.

“It’s alright. It’s alright.” Jaime felt behind him with his hand and touched a solid stone column. It must have fallen over them, one end propped up by other rubble, as the ceiling had fallen on them. “We’re alive.” Turning his head, he realised he could see the bricks on either side of him, which meant there must be some source of light. _With any luck, it’s not dragon fire._ “I have to try and move some of these bricks.”

“I’ll die, I’ll die, Jaime. I’ll die here.”

“We’re not dead yet,” he said, and spared a moment to cup her cheek.

A few moments’ work revealed they were not buried as deeply as he might have feared. Soon he could see the great arches of the tunnels. Less of the ceiling had fallen than it might have.

“I’m going to crawl out,” he told Cersei.

She clutched at him. “Don’t leave me, Jaime, don’t leave me.”

Gently, he pried her fingers free. “I’m not leaving you. You’ll follow me. Shh, Cersei. It’s alright.”

Squirming and wriggling, he forced his way through the bricks, and then leaned back down to help Cersei follow him.

“How will we get out? Where will we go?” she asked plaintively.

“This way.” With the destruction, their previously blocked path had been cleared. He took Cersei’s hand and led her, supporting her when she stumbled on the rubble.

They were half-way to the boat when Cersei stopped. “Wait. I know – I know this place. We can go this way.”

Jaime took her elbow. “No, down here. I have a boat. We can sail away. To Pentos, or … somewhere. Start a new life.”

Cersei pulled away from him. “Pentos? What will we do in Pentos?”

“Live,” Jaime said urgently. “Live. Raise our child.”

“Live on what?” Cersei asked, and the old scorn was back in her voice. “Your earnings as a one-handed swordsman? Or do you intend for me to support us? Our father whored me out, but at least he whored me to a king. Do you see a future of me tupping drunken sailors and bricklayers and wheelwrights to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table?”

“I don’t know!” Jaime grabbed her arm and yanked her to him. “I don’t know, but it has to be better than dying here, than waiting for Daenerys Targaryen’s men to find us.”

“We can still win.” The old steel was back in her voice, as if the woman who had clung to him and pleaded to him to save her had never existed. _Perhaps she never did_. It would not be the first time Cersei had manufactured an emotion simply because she knew it would move him.

“You’ve lost,” Jaime said. “Cersei. Come with me. Live. Bear our child. We can be together –”

She dragged herself free, gathered up her skirts, and ran.

Jaime followed her. She outdistanced him quickly, but he stumbled on, pressing his hand against the wound Euron Greyjoy had put in his side. He had to find her. He had to persuade her. _Come with me. Live._

When he found Cersei, she was in the middle of a large room lined with clay pots. She turned to him, smiling. “Wildfire. We’ll have to lay a fuse,” she said. “But this is where her army will gather, outside the Red Keep. This is where –”

“Are you mad?” Jaime demanded.

“We can shelter in the tunnels. Once her army is destroyed –”

“There are still people alive in the city.” He limped towards her and seized her arm. “If you set this off … if the Targaryen survives, if her dragon does, what do you think she’ll do?”

“If,” Cersei said, and smiled. “When you play the game of thrones, Jaime, you win, or you die. And we’re not dead yet.”

“I won’t let you,” he said fiercely.  “Do you hear me? I won’t let you. We can go, we can –”

Her lips twisted. “You always were weak.” Cersei put her hands on his chest and pushed him away from her, hard enough to make him stagger. “I’ll do it myself. Like I’ve had to do everything myself.”

She turned away from him, and Jaime reached out and grabbed her by her short golden hair. He dragged her back to him. “I won’t let you.”

“Jaime –”

 “I won’t let you.”

Cersei twisted against his grip. “Oh, let me go. You can’t stop me. What are you going to do, carry me off by force? You’re weak, and you’re hurt, and you only have one hand. Stop being –”

Jaime dragged her around to face him, fingers tight in her hair, and backhanded her across the face with his golden hand. “No!”

She staggered, held to her feet by his grip, and put her hands to her face. “How dare you!”

He struck her again. “I came here to save you.”

Cersei spat at him, blood and spittle striking his face. “You’re useless. You’ve been useless since you lost your swordhand. It was the only good part of you, Jaime. You can’t save anyone. You can’t even save yourself!”

For a long moment, they stared at each other, the Queen, the Kingslayer. Brother, sister, lover, twin, the mother and the father of two kings.

Jaime felt his lips curl in a smile. “I think I can, sweet sister,” he said. “I think I can.”

When he pressed his golden hand against her throat Cersei tried to turn aside, but there was enough space between cast finger and metal thumb for Jaime to get his hand around her windpipe. His fingers in her hair pressed her forward, his false hand pressed against her throat –

Her eyes grew wide and she struggled to breathe and then grasped his wrist and tried to drag it away from her, but to no use. Jaime watched the realisation in her eyes, watched her lips turn blue and her face turn purple, watched her eyes glaze over and he held her through it all, held her until her heels kicked uselessly against the floor and she shuddered from head to foot and he smelt her soil herself in death.

Held her awhile longer, until he could be certain she was gone.

Then he let her go, and sank to the ground beside her. _Let us lie here, then._ Cersei was still warm, and Jaime pressed his face to her neck, and leaned into her. It was the first time she hadn’t pushed him away, eager to have him gone from her before anyone saw them.

The blood was still seeping from his side. It was death if he didn’t get to a maester, he knew it, he knew more about wounds and desperate struggles and knives-in-the-side than young fools who thought knighthood was about honour and duels. Euron Greyjoy _had_ killed him, although the fucker hadn’t lived long enough to enjoy it.

 _But not here_.  It was the Red Keep that had destroyed them, whatever Cersei might have thought.  Casterly Rock was their place, had always been their place.

Would always be their place.

Jaime forced himself to his knees, cradling Cersei to him, and then, gritting his teeth, struggled to his feet. The shelves and shelves of wildfire blurred before his eyes.   _How am I going to walk all that way back to the beach?_

 _By putting one foot in front of the other_.

He had to stop and rest more than once, laying Cersei on the dusty floor and collapsing beside her to gasp for breath, but eventually he staggered out of the cave at the end of the tunnel and onto the beach. Daylight, oddly muted, ash falling from the sky to settle on Cersei’s face, the boat –

A girl, getting into the boat.

“Stop!” Jaime’s voice was weak and hoarse. He stumbled forward, lost his balance and fell, Cersei beneath him. “Stop!”

Footsteps crunching on the shale, and then a firm hand took his shoulder and rolled him over. Arya Stark looked down at him expressionlessly, and then at Cersei’s purpled face. “I wanted to kill her.”

“Sorry,” Jaime whispered. He didn’t have the strength to rise, let alone row, and that dinghy would never carry them to Casterly Rock. It had been a fool’s errand, the stupidest plan of the stupidest Lannister. “I had to. You can kill me instead, if you like. Better be quick about it, though.”

Arya knelt beside him, opening his jacket. “These are deep.”

“Unless you have a maester hidden in your sleeve, too deep.”

She studied him a moment longer. “I would have thought Jamie Lannister would be harder to kill.”

He chuckled, which hurt. “Apparently not.”

Arya sat cross-legged beside him. “Are you frightened?”

 _Seven hells, she’s a strange woman._ “No. I’ve never been afraid of death. I just … wish I could die in the arms of the woman I love.”

Arya glanced at Cersei’s corpse. “She’s right there. I can roll you over again, if you want.”

Jaime shook his head. “The woman I love is a long way away. And safe, thank the Seven.”

“What’s it like?”

“Dying? Painful.”

“Being in love. What’s it like, being in love?”

Jaime smiled. “Also painful, as it turns out.”

“Would you rather die, or be in love?”

“I’d rather not die,” Jaime said. “I don’t have much choice about loving.”

“Come on, then.” Arya rose to her feet, stooped, and seized him under his arms. She began to drag him across the beach.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving your life,” Arya said.

Jaime snorted. “Gods old and new, woman, there’s no point even trying.”

“There’s only one god,” Arya said, heaving him over the side of the boat to sprawl in the bottom. “The god of death. And there’s only one thing we say to the god of death.” She picked up the oars. “Not today.”

 


End file.
